


Outrunning the Past

by Telaryn



Series: The Hero and The Bad Boy [21]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Leverage, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Banter, Breaking and Entering, Crossover, Gen, Hacking, Old Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 15:04:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when a certain "billionaire genius playboy philanthropist" runs afoul of Leverage International. Also? Hardison + JARVIS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outrunning the Past

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ishilde as part of the 2013 Leverage Exchange.

If it was the last thing he did in life, Quinn vowed he was going to teach every member of Leverage International to _call first._ “Eliot’s not going to be happy with you pointing guns at me,” Parker declared, crossing her arms over her chest. They’d found her breaking into the secure server at Stark Industries London Headquarters using security measures Quinn had brought online only a day before.

Quinn shrugged, not taking his eyes off the girl. “Call him in. Hardison too. I want to hear why you think Tony Stark is somebody you need to run a job on.”

“Mr. Quinn?” His on-site manager had been looking from him to Parker ever since he’d greeted the thief – clearly not understanding what was going on. _Why should she be any different?_ he thought, feeling tired all of a sudden.

“Nobody stands down,” he said, pitching his voice so that everyone in the room could hear. “Not until the other two show themselves.”

His smart phone vibrated for his attention. Pulling it out, he read: _We’re in your office. Bring Parker and we’ll tell you what we can._ Rolling his eyes, he looked across at the thief. Now it was Parker’s turn to shrug at him.

“Fine,” he sighed. Pointing at Parker he told his people, “She’s coming with me. The rest of you, go back to your posts.” None of them were happy with the order, but he saw firearms being returned to holsters and people dutifully following his instructions all around the room.

All except his on-site manager. “Should we cuff her first?” the woman asked, eyeing Parker nervously. The thief had been crossing the room to stand with Quinn, but at the red-head’s words she paused, eyes shining with a sudden, disturbing light.

Quinn scowled at Parker. “It’ll be fine, Hazel,” he told her. “Cuffing this one won’t do any good. Get IT down here and start going through all the servers, not just the secure one. I want to make sure there’s no sign of intrusion anywhere in the system.” He locked eyes with Parker again, delivering his last words a hair louder than necessary to convey to the woman standing immediately at his right.

 _Choke on that,_ he thought as he and Parker left the room. He needed Hardison out of the Stark servers. If he didn’t do the honorable thing and withdraw all on his own, Quinn needed to know if his people were good enough to ferret the hacker out.  
**********************  
“Did you know Quinn was working for Stark?” Hardison asked distractedly, not looking up from his tablet.

Eliot leaned against the far wall. “Before five minutes ago you mean? I’m not the one in charge of prep work on these things.”

 _That_ got the hacker’s attention. “No, but you _are_ the one of us who was spending more time at S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ than in his own bed there for a while. You trying to tell me the subject never came up?”

“It never came up,” Eliot retorted, his tone flat. “I heard he’d gotten out of the game, but nothing about him going straight to this degree. I just figured he was taking a break until he figured out where he wanted his thing with Clint Barton to go.” It had been an interesting couple of months hanging out with international spies – helping on the occasional covert mission, and watching Jonah Quinn – the most bad-ass retrieval specialist in the business after him – grow more and more calf-eyed over one Clint Francis Barton. Clint was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s top sniper and a member of the Avengers, and once upon a time he’d been the target of a contract Quinn had taken.

Hardison swore under his breath. “What?” Eliot asked, pushing off the wall. He’d only taken a step in the hacker’s direction when the door to the office opened and Quinn walked through – trailed closely by Parker.

“Looks like somebody’s getting a bonus this quarter.” The ex-mercenary was smiling at something on his phone. Looking up at the two of them, he slid the phone into an inner pocket of his suit jacket. “Sorry about that – you understand.”

While Hardison might have understood, Eliot could tell at a glance that the hacker most certainly did _not_ accept whatever Quinn’s people had done. Surprisingly, he chose to keep his opinions on the shift in their circumstances to himself – even when Quinn glanced pointedly at the phone he was still holding. “Put it down, Hardison.”

Scowling, Hardison did as he was told – he set the phone aside and held up his empty hands.

“You’re looking…corporate,” Eliot said, trying to draw Quinn’s attention. It was the only way he knew to describe the flawlessly tailored suit that would have had his high-powered attorney of a twin brother green with envy. “I heard you’d gotten out of the game, but I never would have imagined this.”

Quinn smiled, nimble fingers toying with the lapel of his jacket. “Love makes you do stupid things sometimes.” His pale eyes met Eliot’s without flinching. “Something had to change. Under the circumstances Clint was never going to be okay with me going back to taking contracts no matter how carefully I screened my clients.”

Eliot supposed it made sense. Despite his own somewhat questionable start in life, Clint Barton was one of the good guys. “Working for Stark Industries though?” he asked finally, dragging the subject back around to why they were all here together. “How come you didn’t just sign your life away and make it formal with S.H.I.E.L.D.? Fury would have jumped at the chance to drag either of us in full time.”

At the mention of the spy organization, Quinn looked surprisingly uncomfortable. “Long story,” he said, dropping his hand at last. “Why don’t we save it for after you’ve told me why you’re trying to compromise my security structure?”  
********************************  
You couldn’t trust them – that was the heart of it. Quinn liked what was left of the original Leverage crew and he was pretty sure they all liked him, but they were a “mission first” organization. _And you work for the bad guys now._ Tony Stark, and now Pepper, had been doing their best to overhaul Stark Industries international reputation, but there were still people out there that remembered where the fortune had come from.

“We recently came into possession of a list,” Eliot said finally, after exchanging long meaningful looks with his teammates. Quinn was pretty sure some sort of weird telepathic communication was taking place behind those looks – it was something people had often whispered about (only partly joking) as being one of Nate Ford’s strange powers. Quinn could have easily believed he’d passed it on to his heirs. “Corporate big-wigs and power brokers responsible for bringing on the 2008 crash.”

Pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. “Stark is on the list.” His pulse began to speed up as Eliot nodded. “The company though,” he added, feeling a low, panicked need to make sure they were all on the same page here. “Not Tony.”

“Tony Stark has owned the company since his old man kicked it,” Hardison said quietly. “His name’s on all the corporate documents, his signature authorized the transfers that helped get the ball rolling.”

Quinn shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t. You’ve made a mistake somewhere.” He flinched, realizing that Eliot was studying him with raised eyebrows. “I know the man, Eliot – he wouldn’t do something like that, and he definitely wouldn’t try to cover it up.”

“Evidence doesn’t lie, man.” Hardison started to reach for his phone, but froze – looking to Quinn for permission. Quinn rolled his eyes and gestured for the hacker to continue. “I can walk you through it or you can look at it yourself, but it’s air tight. No matter what he might be trying to do now, your boy Stark did some bad things once upon a time.”

Hardison wasn’t lying, and Quinn respected the man’s skill enough to know that he was likely working from solid information. He knew he should look at it, see what the three of them were using as the basis for their attack, but the idea that the man he knew, the man he’d agreed to work for, was a legitimate target was causing him actual physical pain.

“Hardison, Parker, can you guys give us a few minutes?” After another moment in which Quinn was ready to swear another complete conversation took place just outside his hearing, hacker and thief gathered their things and moved towards the door. Quinn glanced significantly at Eliot, who added at the last second, “Behave yourselves and don’t go poking into anything important just yet.”  
*******************  
It was nothing he could have definitively put his finger on, but Eliot didn’t like what his instincts were telling him about Quinn. “You cheating on Clint already?” he asked, once they were alone.

Quinn reacted as though Eliot had punched him directly in the face. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, pale eyes abruptly blazing with anger. “You think me and Tony Stark..?” He laughed bitterly, and Eliot felt something hard and cold drop into the pit of his stomach. He was only wrong in that Quinn likely hadn’t stopped long enough to figure out that he had actual feelings for the billionaire genius playboy philanthropist.

“Jesus Eliot,” Quinn went on, “I can respect the guy without wanting to get into his pants. Not to mention he divides his romantic time between Pepper Potts and Captain-Freaking-America. Why the fuck would he be interested in the likes of me?” He paused. “How do we fix this? Seriously – I know how you three get when you’re on the trail of something, and I don’t want us to be on opposite sides. Whatever evidence you’ve got, there’s an explanation. I know it.”

He wasn’t thinking clearly. In all the years they’d known each other, Eliot never would have imagined being at a point where Quinn would be willing to ignore evidence in service to feelings he wasn’t even ready to admit he had. “How are things with you and Clint anyway?” he found himself asking.

Quinn shrugged. “Fine. Really good in fact – which is why you trying to make out that I’m interested in Tony Stark that way…”

Eliot held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Fine. Okay – I was wrong. You want to give Stark a chance to answer for himself, we can do that. We owe you at least that much consideration.” He paused, frowning. “I’m going to want a couple of things in return though.”

His friend’s expression was openly suspicious now, but he still said, “Such as?”

“Hardison gets to map the system before we leave this room.” Eliot shook his head, cutting off Quinn’s expected rant. “I’m not taking the chance of evidence getting destroyed just so you can maintain your starry-eyed illusions about the man. You have my word we won’t do anything until we’ve heard him out.”

Quinn sighed. “We’ve reached the point where I think you need to get Hardison back in here, because when I tell you why he’s not going to be able to map the system, you’re not going to believe me.”

It was only when the door opened a beat later that Quinn remembered their comm units and nearly facepalmed. He settled for glaring at Eliot. “If it helps,” the hitter offered in return, “you’re not the first person to forget about them.”

It didn’t.

What it did do was save him some time bringing Hardison up to speed. “So you’ve got something in this system you think is a match for me?” the hacker asked, glancing down at his phone. His thumbs were already working, doing things Quinn could only guess at. “You’re good for who you are Q,” he said, looking up again. “I’ll give you that. The protocol you put in place – that’s some decent work. You want to stop me though…” His voice trailed off and his eyes slowly widened as a smooth, accented voice filled the air around them.

_”Please don’t do that, Mr. Hardison. I do not wish to call the authorities on a friend of Mr. Quinn’s but I would advise you not to push me.”_

Quinn couldn’t help grinning at the look on Hardison’s face. “I’d advise you do what he says.”

The hacker’s eyes were literally shining as he looked up from his phone. “It’s real? JARVIS is real? Man, I’ve heard rumors for decades, but…it’s really real? I’m talking to it?”

 _”Mr. Quinn,”_ the AI sighed, _”I presume you have some reason for attracting my attention in this unorthodox manner?”_

 _Oh, Tony is going to kick my ass,_ Quinn thought, the full import of what he’d done suddenly starting to sink in. If he was being completely honest with himself he’d been showing off, calling on the most powerful artificial intelligence in the world like he did it every day. “These people are friends of mine,” he said out loud. “They have some mistaken ideas about Tony that I was hoping you could correct.”

There was a moment of silence, then JARVIS said, _“I will need permission from sir to disclose the information, but if he agrees I have no problems answering your friends’ concerns.”_  
*********************  
It took less than half an hour to get Tony’s attention. “We’re going to talk about this, JB,” he said, glaring at Quinn darkly. But he agreed to answer the team’s questions.

2008, as it turned out, was the year Tony’s life turned around. It was the year he’d been kidnapped and held prisoner in a cave in Afghanistan, freeing himself by means of the first Iron Man armor and the prototype for the arc reactor that up until recently had kept him alive. “I’m sure a lot of the things that landed me on that list were before I shut down our weapons division, when I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to the company or what my Chief Operating Officer was trying to do with it.”

This was Tony Stark at his most genuine and honest, and Quinn could see the others responding to it. The man had charisma to spare, most effective when he was busy _not_ trying to use it.

He was also relieved to discover that despite Tony’s insistence on taking personal responsibility for everything the Leverage team was accusing him of, the worst acts had been spearheaded by his Chief Operating Officer at the time, Obadiah Stane.

Around the time the conversation took a hard right into Hardison’s first question about JARVIS, Quinn realized Eliot was watching him. Barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he gestured the hitter to follow him out into the hallway. “How embarrassing is that likely to get in there?” he asked, tipping his head back towards the room where Hardison had been on the verge of achieving full-on fanboy babble.

Eliot glowered. “Bad enough that I really don’t want to hear it.” His expression mellowed slightly. “I’m sorry for doubting you man – sounds like Stark really is trying to make good in his own bizarre playboy billionaire way.”

“I told you,” Quinn said, “he’s really not at all like the media tries to make him out.” He paused, meeting Eliot’s eyes. “You’ll leave him be then?”

The hitter nodded. “We’ve got bigger, more important targets on the horizon. As soon as Hardison finishes drooling on himself, we’ll be out of your hair.”

They were silent for a long moment; Quinn processing his relief at having helped Tony Stark dodge a fairly dangerous bullet. _They really are the worst sort of bloodhounds when they get their teeth into something._ Not for the first time he wondered how Eliot was coping without Nate’s weirdly steadying influence and guiding hand. “You know you should call next time you’re in New York. Tasha and I are trying to get Clint to broaden his culinary horizons and we could use the back-up.”

That, surprisingly, got a smile out of Eliot. “I’ll do that.”

Quinn smirked, understanding that the hitter’s enthusiasm was as much about seeing the Black Widow again as entering into the hopelessly doomed battle to convince Clint Barton that meat came in forms besides cheeseburgers, hot dogs, fried chicken and bloody rare Porterhouse steaks.

“You happy?” Eliot’s question startled him somewhat, but Quinn chuckled – feeling the world soften around him.

“I am,” he admitted. “Stupidly so. It feels like we’ve really turned a corner relationship wise, and having a legit job after all these years?” He shrugged. “It’s never boring around here.”

Eliot cut his eyes meaningfully at the closed door separating them from Hardison’s fangasmic meltdown. “Just watch yourself,” he said gently. “Make sure what you have is what you really want out of all this.”

And there it was again, the implication that Quinn was somehow interested in Tony Stark. Eliot’s warning was delivered with such genuine sincerity, however, that the ex-mercenary decided not to turn things into an argument. “I love Clint,” he said as firmly as he could manage. “Nothing’s ever going to get in the way of that. Nothing.”


End file.
